In my never-ending quest to research the highest camp in trashy C-movies, years ago I rented Surf Nazis Must Die. It was not a success, even as schlocky camp. Just check out the few viewer comments at IMDB if you’re a glutton. Stick with Army of Darkness instead. (Or really anything with Groovy Bruce Campbell, the Olivier of B-movies, who can do no wrong on screen.)
I hadn’t given Surf Nazis a second thought in almost 30 years, until I came across this important true crime story this morning:
Police chief promises to take on harassment, assault by surfers
LOS ANGELES—At the beginning of the big wave season last December, Sef Krell began his descent down a steep pathway from a coastal bluff to Palos Verdes’ Lunada Bay, one of Southern California’s most storied – and notorious – surfing spots.
Suddenly, Krell found himself being pummeled by dirt clods thrown from above by men yelling at him to go home. They didn’t want a stranger using a public beach they considered off-limits to outsiders.
Krell had braved a beach that for decades has been known for its hooligan-enforced insularity. Surfers who are not local proceed at their peril, while authorities look the other way.
But the new police chief is promising to clean up the beaches, and discipline these hooligans, who are known popularly as the “Bay Boys.” Sounds likes a nasty gang. I wonder what their colors and tattoos are like? The story does not provide this important information.
But it does offer this background:
“Those Bay Boys are a lot more sinister than people know,” said Geoff Hagins, a longtime activist who lamented that a video camera aimed at the water was removed a decade ago by the City Council after community opposition. . .
And [police chief] Kepley pushed back against the perception that the Bay Boys—who are largely white and middle-aged—are representative of the city’s people.
There you have it: middle-aged white guys, once again, oppressing hipsters. Couldn’t see that coming. Time for a remake of Surf Nazis Must Die (which is starting to look more like a documentary in retrospect)?
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